Why should you buy green products?

August 25, 2009 at 5:21 pm · Filed under Green Product Tips, Understanding your Impact ·Tagged , , ,

Nowadays, it seems to be very trendy to “go green”, which means to buy environmentally-friendly products. But buying green products is more than a fad. There are many benefits to both your home and the earth when you use green products.

The most obvious benefit of green products is that they are safe for the environment. Green cleaning products, for example, don’t have harsh chemicals like many other cleaning products do. Products with harsh chemicals can affect both the ground and water when they are washed down the drain.

Green products are also lower in VOCs, or volatile organic compounds, than other types of products are. This is a huge benefit if someone in your home or business suffers from respiratory problems, as VOCs are likely to worsen or even bring on such conditions. Indoor air quality also improves greatly overall when VOCs are not present.

Finally, most manufacturers of green products take great care to use recycled materials in their packaging. This is a great benefit to the earth, as materials that would end up in landfills are instead reused.

Give buying green products a try-the benefits far outweigh any additional cost. The earth will thank you for it.

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5 uses for recycled shopping bags

August 7, 2009 at 9:33 pm · Filed under Recycled Shopping Bags ·Tagged , ,

Five Uses for Recycled Shopping Bags

Those plastic shopping bags don’t have to go into the trash, but can be of multiple uses throughout the house with a little creativity. Here are five ways to turn them into helpers instead of polluters.

First of all, these shopping bags make wonderful packing material when shipping an item. They are wonderful padding, and will keep the item safe in transport.

Second, these bags make wonderful trash bags for the smaller cans in your home, such as you use in the bathroom or office. By emptying the trash and leaving the bag in (if able to), you use the bag multiple more times.

A third use is as convenient carry bags. If you have to take things somewhere, and need an extra hand, keeping these bags on hand will help you out immensely.

Fourth, these are wonderful liners for your cat box. By layering them in the bottom, it keeps the litter from sticking and makes clean-up much easier in the end than usual.

Fifth, they are a fast cover when you need to store something in the refrigerator. This is an easy fix in a tight spot.

Recycling shopping bags helps you in many ways and the earth.

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The Benefits of natural reusable shopping bags

July 29, 2009 at 7:10 pm · Filed under Green Product Tips ·Tagged , ,

The Benefits of natural reusable shopping bags

Using natural reusable shopping bags is an easy way for everyone to help the environment. We all shop for groceries as well as other items on a weekly basis. Grocery stores often offer an option of paper or plastic, but many retailers only supply plastic bags. Neither of these choices is as environmentally friendly as a natural reusable shopping bag. A small initial monetary outlay can benefit the environment in many ways.
Paper and plastic bags can be recycled, and might be made of previously recycled materials. If not, the most obvious issue is the raw materials used to manufacture the bags. Minimizing use of natural resources is one benefit of using reusable bags. The recycling process is energy intensive and does not reclaim 100 percent of the original packaging. There is the energy used to manufacture the recycled products and associated energy demands of transporting the materials to the recycling center and processing plants. Reusable bags can eliminate some of this energy use and help minimize global warming. Individuals need to take advantage of all ways at our disposal to live environmentally friendly lives, even if the gains seem modest. In numbers these small steps will become large strides.

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Understanding your Carbon Footprint

July 21, 2009 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Understanding your Impact ·Tagged , , ,

What is a Carbon Footprint?

A carbon footprint is the measurement given to the amount of greenhouse gases, those gases that are naturally a part of the earth’s atmosphere that keep it warmer than it would be without them, for which a person or group is directly or indirectly responsible to contributing more than would be naturally occurring otherwise. The carbon footprint specifically measures the amount of carbon dioxide or CO2 that individual people and/or groups are responsible for producing. The earth is heated by the sun, and when solar radiation combines with the carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, instead of releasing the energy, it absorbs it. If too many carbons are in the atmosphere, the sun’s radiation becomes trapped and cannot be reflected out of the planet, thus causing the planet to heat more than it would naturally without man’s contribution. This interferes with natural climate change and can be detrimental to life as we know it on this planet. Without care to reduce our carbon footprint, we contribute to the warming of the planet beyond the point at which it can be viable to sustain life. The larger the carbon footprint, the more impact that person or group has on this problem.

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What Are You Drinking?

July 13, 2009 at 8:30 pm · Filed under Green Product Tips ·Tagged , ,

Periodically reports surface that bottled water has as much bacteria and impurities as tap water. In addition the bottled water companies are not subject to as much oversight as those of government or town water supplies. Let’s face it people are still going to be drinking bottled water for its convenience.
Many people would argue that using an alternative to bottled brands is just as convenient. I tend to agree with this statement, bottled waters are expensive and the plastic bottles they come in are not environmentally sound. I would also argue that filtering your own tap water is just as easy as walking into a store and buying bottled water.

The jury is still out on this water business. Sure there are companies that are new and have not undergone a rigorous review of the contents of their water and where it comes from. On the other hand there are some bottled water companies that get their water from good sources.
It is not sinful to pick up and drink one of the better-known bottled waters. Their reputation and name is too valuable for them to take unnecessary chances with the quality of their water. What I do find to be almost sinful is not considering a reusable bottle for your water, reusable products save money, energy and space in landfills. The choice is yours.

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Tips That Make “Green” Easy

June 12, 2009 at 12:26 pm · Filed under Green Product Tips ·Tagged , , , ,

These may seem like small steps, but over the course of your life, following this advice will definitely qualify you as “green”. Suggest these tips to your friends and family, and ask for any ideas that they may have. If we all work together, we’ll have a major impact on the way the next generation will live!

1. Reusable shopping bags – Anyone who regularly shops at grocery stores or even large chain stores have surely seen people using reusable shopping bags (which are usually made of recycled material). These bags make a big difference in the big picture, as it takes over 1000 years for a regular plastic bag to break down in a landfill. Multiply that by billions of bags, and it’s easy to see why you should avoid using them!

2. Save water – Be honest, your showers are probably a bit longer than what they should be. All that extra water matters and if you shave just five minutes off your shower every day, over the course of a few months you’ll notice water bill savings and you’ll be saving valuable energy.

3. Forget bottled water – Bottled water is highly overrated, and simply by installing a good water filter on your kitchen faucet, you can not only save a ton of money, but you’ll also get higher quality water than the bottle you’re used to drinking, and you’ll be doing your part in cutting down on the billions of plastic water bottles that are used each year for bottling water.

4. Use or lose the sun – On colder days, keep the shades open all over the house for an instant boost in free solar heat. Over the course of a day, it will give your furnace a noticeable break. On those dreadfully hot summer days, invest in sun blocking curtains or shades that you can install throughout your house to keep the sun from heating up your home, which makes your air conditioning system work harder than it needs to.

5. Maintain proper tire pressure – This little step can actually save you thousands of dollars and countless amount of wasted energy in the form of fuel over the course of your life. When your tire pressure is off, you burn a lot more fuel, which we all know isn’t very green. It takes five seconds to check your tire pressure with a gauge you can get for about two dollars.

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Welcome to My Green Products Blog

June 11, 2009 at 2:52 pm · Filed under General Chat

Hi,

I am Carolyn and here is my story. I have always been a little bit of a flower child, only problem is I was born a little too late. My parents were never really nature types so I spent many summers on my grandparents farm. I loved the farm, the open air, soft breeze, lush gardens and pastures. This was very different from home, my grandparents did things the  “old fashioned way” at least that is what my mother said. Old fashioned or not I loved it there and I truly believe that the experiences on the farm all those summers taught me to love myself and the beauty of our earth.
Even though the summers on the farm have long ago passed, My grandfather passed away in 1991 (grand-mom moved into a retirement type complex soon after) I have always had great respect for our earth, animals, land and people. I hope to share some of my passion here, so if you are interested in learning more about the  things that bring passion into my life stick around and read this blog often.
I look forward to sharing with you all!

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